Silhouette {Tutorial} – Print & Cut

The Silhouette can do many amazingly awesome things, the problem is you have to know how to use the software to get it to do all those amazingly awesome things. I will try to bring you some Silhouette Tutorials as questions come my way.

Today’s tutorial is how to effectively use the Print and Cut feature on your machine to “punch” out party circles/logos/tags in many different shapes without needing any physical punches! I am going to use my Spring party tags from my latest Crafty Ladies Night Out post. However after going through the steps to make the tutorial I realized it would be easier if I resized my dimensions to make it easier for you. So you can now download those newly resized pages here and here. However my screen shots will have the original files.

***warning – the following tutorial is rather wordy – my apologizes in advanced***{if you want to see more details in the photos just click on them to get a full screen view}

Open a new Silhouette Studio page and turn on your registration marks

Import the downloaded file into your Library

Go to your image library and double click on the file you just imported. If you can not find it make sure you are looking in the folder that is called “Show All Designs” it should be in there. When you open the image it will be much larger than your page, just resize it until the graphics fit in the red box (which is the constraints on the cutting area).

It should look like this

Using the circle drawing button on the left hand side of the screen, make a circle that is the size you wan your “punch” to be and center it around the tag (Silhouette studios gives you great guides that show you the height and width of your drawing so you know it’s an exact circle).

a closer look – then copy and paste that circle as many times as punches you need. You will have to manually center the circles on top of each graphic.

But you don’t just have to use circles. Here I took a scalloped circle shape I had and resized it to fit my graphic and then copied and pasted it 2 more times.

And then I did the same with a scalloped square

And a fun bracket shape, too!

(this completes our screen shot portion of the tutorial)

Now you are ready to print and cut the page. Here is where the tricky wordy part starts. First you want to go to Object Cut Line Settings and make sure that the large imported file is not set to cut because it will try to cut all the way around the border of that file you imported (just select that line/large box that is going all the way around the page and then click “no cut”). Then, for some reason Silhouette will not print the registration marks correctly if you have an image on top of them (even though you can clearly see those registration marks in full in the photo above, the white portion of my image is sitting on top of them and they wouldn’t print out for me). So if at all possible make your image smaller than those marks.

Now we are ready to cut. Select your paper type and make sure you have the right blade setting for your paper type and press “send to Silhouette”. It will ask you if you want to print or skip printing, go ahead and print your paper with the registration marks. Then it will ask you if you want to detect registration marks, and the answer is Yes! This is how the machine knows exactly where to cut your shapes in relationship to your printed page. Once the marks have been detected you just tell it to go ahead and cut and that’s it!! Now it may take a couple of times of trial and error to get it all down but of course practice makes perfect! Here is what mine looked like

I hope that this make some sense. It is way easier to do than to explain, so if there are any parts that don’t make sense please leave a comment and I will email you back! Or leave me a posting on my Facebook page and I will get back to you there! Happy Crafting!

I’m going to follow this to make some cutouts for my daughter’s first bday this Saturday! So cute! I just got my Silhouette and haven’t used it for much yet! I’d love for you to link up on my new Link Party – Tuesday Time Out!

Fabulous tutorial! I haven’t yet used the print & cut feature because I’ve had so many alignment issues. I had no idea how to use registration marks, and this has helped so much…I can’t wait to try it out this weekend!

Thanks for the tute! Too bad I didn’t have this 3 months ago when I wasted my pretty paper! In all my trial and error, I found a way similar to yours, but might a bit faster. Instead of importing to my library, I just saved my image as png, and opened it through the silhouette software, then did trace, or used the shape I wanted. I hit CTRL+A copy and pasted as many times as I could to fill the page. That way each image, and cut would be EXACTLY the same. Make sense? So instead of creating a bunch of cupcake toppers in PS, I just created one, then copied them in silhouette. I hope I made sense here, If not, then I’m just a crazy lady, and you may ignore me! Ha!

Thank you! Especially for the tip about moving the image, printing the registration marks, and then moving it back. I was so frustrated trying to figure that out. Once I finally figured out that the “white” part of my image was “covering” the marks, even though I could see them, I ended up using the eraser on the corners, but it was still trial and error. Your way seems much better!

LOVE these!!! I have a silhouette and I made “printables” in the silhouette program…I had less options than using a different design program and then when I went to cut them, the circles were all off so they were all uneven. This tutorial is soooo helpful!! Thanks for the tips! Also, I second Jeanine, tutorial on how you made the artwork would be awesome because yours look amazing!!

Thank you so much:)! I am making sugar scrubs that need labels made. I have been so scared to use my silhouette but now I know I can do it:)! Your explination was great. Thank you for your time and tut:)!!

Hi Sue, downloading a print and cut file is the easiest way to go about it. You can search the store for only P&C files. They are noted by a small P in the lower right had corner. You can import any jpg into silhouette though to be able to do print & cut.

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Welcome! {I’m Stacy.}

Good time, great laughs, and lots of crafts!
I am a full-time working momma of 2 adorable and funny and fully southern little ladies. I like to think that everyone has a crafty side, even if it's only kinda crafty.

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